Book Addendum Number 1
In the past two months, I have discovered some information that I will include in any second edition of my first book “Hi-Fi For Low Dough”. So let’s consider this blog post the first addendum to my book. The first new thing I discovered concerns a small portable music player that I wrote about in the book. It’s called the FiiO X1, and it plays digital music files that you put on a microSD card that you insert into the player. When you rip a music CD onto your computer with no compression, you will get digital music files where the data has been sampled 44,100 times per second and each of those sample numbers is a 16-bit number. That’s 16 binary bits (0 or 1) that can represent decimal numbers from 1 to 65,536. This data is commonly represented by the shorthand of 44/16. Musical data of that format is commonly called “CD Quality.” The reason I wrote the book is to let people know that music has been recorded at higher resolution than that for many years, and now that computer storage is bigger and cheaper, and cable modem broadband speeds are so much faster, you can now download digital music files that contain much more information than the old standard of “CD Quality.” One of the new standards for “Hi-res Music” is digital files of data sampled at 96/24. That’s 24-bit numbers (1-16,777,216) sampled 96,000 times per second.
Now, you can find many opinions on the internet, of people that cannot hear much difference between “CD Quality” and “Hi-res”. And I agree that if you only listen to music in high-noise environments (like driving in your car) or using inexpensive ear buds, headphones, or speakers, you probably won’t hear enough difference to warrant the extra expense of building a hi-res catalog of music files. You may also need to invest in new hardware to handle higher resolution digital files. If you decide that hi-res music is worth investigating, there are two new options to check out. First, to be able to hear the higher quality and bigger stage presence of “Hi-res”, you need some modern headphones or speakers. For new speakers, I recommend you check out the Elac Debut F5 or F6 speakers. If you’re into headphones, check out the HIFIMAN HE400S or the HE400I. You can find a lot of good reviews of those items on amazon.com. Secondly, you now have some new options for hi-res music on smartphones. I recently bought a new phone called the HTC U11. This phone will record video at full HD and 4K with hi-res audio up to 192/24. The display is 2560 x 1440 at 534 ppi (pixels per inch.) You can insert a microSD card up to at least 256GB. I inserted a card that had 96/24 flac music files and they sound great even using the included noise-cancelling, adaptive earphones. I also listened to the smartphone using my HIFIMAN HE400S headphones and the sound produced is flawless. You can easily add playlists using the music player software on the smartphone, and then hook up the smartphone to your auxiliary jack in your car for an incredible audio experience when you travel.
I discovered this smartphone just in time. On my recent cross-country trip, I discovered that my FiiO X1 portable hi-res music player has a problem with hi-res files. It will play CD-Quality files perfectly, but when it plays 96/24 flac files, it will sometimes have a hiccup. You have probably streamed a video from the internet that doesn’t have enough of a buffer memory built up yet and it skips some frames or you see a jumbled video picture for a split second. The same kind of thing was happening with my music player. The pitch and quality of the music playback would skip and jumble once every minute or so. I don’t know if the problem was the quality of the microSD card, or the transfer of the files to the card, or the player itself, but I would no longer recommend this player. I would now recommend getting a newer player or a new hi-res capable smartphone.
Now, you can find many opinions on the internet, of people that cannot hear much difference between “CD Quality” and “Hi-res”. And I agree that if you only listen to music in high-noise environments (like driving in your car) or using inexpensive ear buds, headphones, or speakers, you probably won’t hear enough difference to warrant the extra expense of building a hi-res catalog of music files. You may also need to invest in new hardware to handle higher resolution digital files. If you decide that hi-res music is worth investigating, there are two new options to check out. First, to be able to hear the higher quality and bigger stage presence of “Hi-res”, you need some modern headphones or speakers. For new speakers, I recommend you check out the Elac Debut F5 or F6 speakers. If you’re into headphones, check out the HIFIMAN HE400S or the HE400I. You can find a lot of good reviews of those items on amazon.com. Secondly, you now have some new options for hi-res music on smartphones. I recently bought a new phone called the HTC U11. This phone will record video at full HD and 4K with hi-res audio up to 192/24. The display is 2560 x 1440 at 534 ppi (pixels per inch.) You can insert a microSD card up to at least 256GB. I inserted a card that had 96/24 flac music files and they sound great even using the included noise-cancelling, adaptive earphones. I also listened to the smartphone using my HIFIMAN HE400S headphones and the sound produced is flawless. You can easily add playlists using the music player software on the smartphone, and then hook up the smartphone to your auxiliary jack in your car for an incredible audio experience when you travel.
I discovered this smartphone just in time. On my recent cross-country trip, I discovered that my FiiO X1 portable hi-res music player has a problem with hi-res files. It will play CD-Quality files perfectly, but when it plays 96/24 flac files, it will sometimes have a hiccup. You have probably streamed a video from the internet that doesn’t have enough of a buffer memory built up yet and it skips some frames or you see a jumbled video picture for a split second. The same kind of thing was happening with my music player. The pitch and quality of the music playback would skip and jumble once every minute or so. I don’t know if the problem was the quality of the microSD card, or the transfer of the files to the card, or the player itself, but I would no longer recommend this player. I would now recommend getting a newer player or a new hi-res capable smartphone.
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